Tjerck Claessen DeWitt

born ca. 1618, Groot Holum, Ostfriesland
died 17 February 1700/1, Hurley, New York

Barbara Andrieszen [family name unknown]

born in Amsterdam [?], probably ca. 1635
died 6 September 1714, Hurley, New York

Marritje DeWitt

MVDW 13
TGE 13. xii. Family 10.
most likely named for her mother’s sister, Marritie Andriessen
no baptism record in Dutch Reformed Church
born in Kingston or Hurley, New York probably ca. 1680-1682, judging from birth order
Presumed buried in Kingston, New York; possibly buried elsewhere in the area. Wikitree says she died in 1733, without listing a source; if her husband Jan MacLean died in 1720 in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, that might be a place to look (Rhinebeck is right across the Hudson from Kingston).

1. Hendrick Hendricksen [Kortreght]

born “under jurisdiction” of Kingston (i.e., in the parish but not in Kingston proper) and residing in Mombaccus
Banns published (undated); married 3 November 1700, Old Dutch Church, Kingston

His father: Hendrick Jansen Kortreght (per Wikitree, citing Abbott, John Howard, The Courtright (Kortright) family: descendants of Bastian Van Kortryk, a native of Belgium who emigrated to Holland about 1615, New York, T.A. Wright, 1922)
His mother: Catherine Hansen Webber, per Genealogical Society of Bergen County (New Jersey) Web page, which acknowledges incomplete (though likely helpful) sources. See also https://www.njgsbc.org/files/familyfiles/p1154.htm#i14566

(Not to be confused with: Marritie’s sister Geertruy DeWitt marries Hendrick Hendricksen Schoonmaker. On the same day as Marritje and her Hendrick marry in Kingston, probably at the same church service, Geertruy and her Hendrick baptize their son Jacob, with Andries DeWitt [brother] and Tiaatie Hofmans [cousin] as sponsors.)

Marritje and Hendrick baptize their son Tjerck four months after their marriage.

The consistory minutes of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, translated from the original Dutch by Dr. Charles Gehring, include the following entry from 6 September 1702:

Whereas Marritje de Wit, who is lawfully married to Hendrick Hendrikse, has had carnal intercourse with a Negro, and has brought a Negro child into the world; also, Marritje has afterward commited carnal intercourse with a certain Jan Macklin, and continues to do so: Therefore, we have decided, as servants of the Divine Word and consistory of the congregation of Jesus Christ in Kingstouwn, that he, Hendrick, has lawful reason to divorce himself from her to be allowed to marry another, having no claim ever again on the aforementioned, as he hereby promises, and in our presence he has divorced himself from her, which we confirm, and they are divorced and shall thus remain divorced.

2. Jan Macklin (probably MacLean)

born in Scotland, residing in Kingston
Banns published (undated); married 6 September 1702, Old Dutch Church, Kingston

Marritje and Jan baptize their son Jan six months after their marriage.

MyHeritage site (see below) says he was born in 1675 (probably an estimate) and died in 1720, in Rhinebeck, Dutchess County, New York

Baptized with Hendrick Hendricksen [Kortreght]

Tjerck Kortreght

MVDW 85
TGE 83. i.
baptized 9 March 1701, Old Dutch Church, Kingston
parents: Hendrick Hendricksen and Marritje De Wit
(named for her father)
witnesses: Leucas de Wit (her brother), Barbar de Wit (her mother)
Marritje’s father dies just before this baptism
It is interesting that Lucas is the witness here

Not in Record?

The divorce record above indicates that Marritje has a “Negro” child. Assuming that this is not Tjerck, baptized in March 1701, and assuming that Marritje’s son Jan, baptized March 1703, would have been conceived ca. June 1702, we might estimate that Marritje gave birth sometime between December 1701 and June 1702 to this infant, whose name (and whose father’s name) is not recorded in the Old Dutch Church records. Kingston Supervisors records show the father’s name was Pieter; see below. More English-language civil records from Kingston in this period might shed more light on the unusual circumstances surrounding this relationship. (Those records, to a great degree, are best studied by visiting the Ulster County Archives in Kingston.)

It appears the infant died before 27 April 1702, of natural causes, probably in Dutchess County, across the river from Kingston. It would be illuminating to learn more about who the father was—the record lists him as an enslaved African working for Barbara DeWitt, Marritje’s mother—and what happened next in his story.

On 11 January 1702, Marytje de Wit and Boduwyn de Wit are witnesses at the baptism of Tryntje, daughter of Gerrit Tyssen and Geertruy Janss, at the Old Dutch Church. If this is “our” Marritje, she presumably is not yet subject of local scandal.

Between March 1701 and March 1703, no baptisms in the Old Dutch Church hint at being the baptism of Marritje’s “Negro” child. See for comparison 21 February 1703, the baptism of David, son of Hyltje Decker: The father is not named, and there are no witnesses named. This suggests that her son was born out of wedlock. No similar record exists that looks like a son or daughter of Marritje de Wit, or Macklin, or Kortreght.

Anne Borelli graciously shared the following, from
Board of Supervisors Minutes 1700 to 1731 and 1793 to 1795 at
https://clerk.ulstercountyny.gov/archives:

1702
In the thirteenth year of the Reigne
of W the third King over England
The jurors for our sd. Lord the King upon their oath does present
this pieter the negro slave of Barbera dewitt of the
Corperation of Kingstowne in sd. County of Ulster in ye
twelfth year of the Reigne of William the third the
King over England hath commted adultery with Marritie
Hendrickse wife of hendrick hendricksen been Late of
the Corperation of Kingstowne aforesd moste presently
and against the peace of our sd. Lord the King W.
Billa Vera
Th. Noxon Foreman

The online record does not have a specific date attached to it. (The adultery is alleged to have taken place in 1701, so presumably it came to light after the baby was born, maybe early in 1702. William III was crowned 11 April 1689, so the 13th year of his reign would begin 11 April 1701.) No further information or case outcome is suggested by the online record.

The transcription in a separate record says D’ will instead of De Witt, but I suspect it tells the end of the sad story of Marritje and Pieter’s child:

27 April 1702
Ulst/Dutt [probably a reference to Dutchess County?]
At a meeting of Justices helden in Kingston
this 27th day of Apr. 1702
Present Esq. Justices of the peace
Coll Jacob Rutsen
Arron Gerritse
Roclife Swartwood
By reason there be no coroner for sd. Countys a warrant
being derected to the high sherrif to ? ? to
be a Jury to vein and Inquire how the child of Marrcitie D' will
Came to its death whom are, Charles Brodhead Teunis Tappen
Tomis Jansen, Abram lamaetere, Cornelis Masten, Bay Coevell,
Mattys Steenbergen, John Avels, Symon Avesphalen, Pieter Van
Vehen, Sander Voosrans, Mattys Parson, and were sworn accrodingly
the said Jury make Return that the Child of Marritie D'will afacesd
is died its natural death.

There’s a lot of mistranscription here (Avesphalen is probably Westphalen? other names are similarly awry), and it appears that the inquest included Dutchess County representatives, possibly because the infant was born and died across the river from Kington. Did Marritje go stay with her brother Peeck to try to avoid embarrassment? Had Hendrick already sent her away from home? Whom else might she have known across the river?

(Peek was living in Manhattan when he first married in 1698 and when he baptized his first daughter later that year; his father Tjerck bought land in Dutchess County in 1700 and deeded it to Peeck. There was no church in Dutchess County where a mother could baptize her baby until at least a decade later—with the first ones down nearer to Poughkeepsie, and at Rhinebeck, as told in Documentary History of Rhinebeck, Calvinists and Lutherans even had to share a church building at first—and ca. 1700 there weren’t really any justices of the peace or other governmental figures across the river either, so much of the business of Dutchess County was handled by the Ulster County administration. From 1700 to 1711, Peeck baptizes children in the Kingston church; it is not clear whether he lives across the river or in Ulster County. When he remarries in 1723 after his first wife dies, he is listed as living “under the jurisdiction of Kingston.” His youngest child is baptized 1830 in Greene County, according to Evans, but all the kids up to then have been baptized at Kingston.)

Baptized with Jan Macklin (probably MacLean)

Jan Macklin

MVDW 86
TGE 84. ii.
baptized 7 March 1703, Old Dutch Church, Kingston
parents: Jan Macklin and Marritje de Wit
witnesses: Arent and Geesje Teunisse
(worth noting: Marritje’s family does not appear at any subsequent baptisms)
Jan Maklien marries Grietjen Heermans 21 April 1727, first marriage for both, “both parties born and resid. in Kingstown.”

On 20 July 1755, in Kingston, John Maclin and Mareitje Maclin sponsor the baptism of Elisabeth, daughter of Thomas Henli and Elisabeth Mebs. This would not be Jan and Marrietje (who are both gone by then), but judging from the names it is likely two descendants. The connection to the baby’s parents is not clear from the record.

Possibly the John in the baptism record is Jan (1703), son of Jan Macklin and Marritje DeWitt, and the Mareitje is his daughter Marytjen, baptized 1732. It also could be Marytjen (1732) and her brother Jan (baptized 1738), the third successive Jan Macklin in this family.

At court sessions in Kingston, November 1742, “John McKleen and Jan Heermans, present possessors of the old barn of Jan Heremans, decd., are ordered to remove it, as it is a nuisance. Again in November 1744, the court rules that the “[b]arn of John McKlean, formerly property of Jan Heeremans, [is] to be repaired within three weeks or pulled down. (National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 61, No. 1 [March 1973], “Ulster County, New York, Court Records, 1693-1775,” pp. 66-67, translated and edited by Kenneth Scott, F.A.S.G.)

Daniel Macklin

MVDW 87
TGE 85. iii.
baptized 20 June 1708, Old Dutch Church, Kingston
parents: Jan Maklien, Maritie de Wit
witnesses: Chyerls [Charles?] Waaly, Tryntje in ’t Veldt

Margrita Macklin

MVDW 88
TGE 86. iv.
baptized 1 July 1711, Old Dutch Church, Kingston
parents: Jan Maklien, Marretjen de Wit
witnesses: Willem Sodderland, Margriet Sodderland
(a note elsewhere says this is in Shawangunk, but it’s in the baptismal record from the Old Dutch Church in Kingston)
She married in Kingston 3 July 1731 Jan Wels, Jr., son of Jan Wels and Cornelia Janse De Duyster; she is described as “born in Savengonk [Shawangunk]” and he as born in Kingston; both reside in Kingston.

Marritjen Macklin

MVDW 89
baptized as Marytjen 27 September 1713, Old Dutch Church, Kingston
parents: Jan Klien, Marretjen de Wit
witnesses: Pieter Makriger, Latiesjen [surname not given]
birthplace
spouse

others?

Cornelius

Old Dutch Church marriage records show on 19 August 1726 Cornelis Maklien, “born in Savengonk [Shawangunk]” marries Zara Schoonmaker, born “under the jurisdiction of Kingstown,” first marriage for both, both residing in Kingston. Jan (bap. 1703, above) and his wife Grietje are sponsors for Cornelis’ first child, 28 May 1727; see GSBC listing. It appears someone has a burial record, but I haven’t found it.

Zara [Sara] Schoonmaker is the daughter of Marritje’s sister Geertruy DeWitt, so if Cornelis is Marritje’s son, he would be marrying his cousin. Probably a better explanation is that he is a son of Jan Macklin from before he and Marritje were married? See also this record from Wikitree.

Cornelius is described as living 1703-1762, need reference. Geni.com says he was born in Shawangunk in 1701, but this does not match records pertaining to Jan and Marrietje. The same page lists his death on 22 July 1762, in Kingston; if he is a son of Marrietje, he could have been baptized in Shawangunk, but likely not in 1701. 1705, maybe? 1709/10? His age as reported at death could be inaccurate. Or he might be a son of Jan Macklin but not Marritje DeWitt.

Also worth exploring: Could this be the child of a Black father described at the time of Marritje’s divorce, adopted by Jan Macklin and raised with the name Macklin? More investigation could help.

Jannetje?

from https://www.myheritage.com/names/jan_macklin%20maklien#, citing the NYGBS Record (I have not gone back to verify these entries, but Wikitree refers to the Record vols. 17-18, 1886, pp. 13, 255):

Jannetje Decker (born M’Clean)

[I can’t find this Jannetje Decker in Kingston records.]

Notes

Divorce in unusual in this period. Worth observing: Marritie’s father, Tjerck Claessen, fathered a daughter out of wedlock in 1647, recorded in the church books of Esens, Ostfriesland (today Germany). There is some suggestion that Tjerck’s own father in the 1620s may have married Tjerck’s mother after she was already pregnant, though the record is obscure. Nobody is compelled to repeat the pattern followed by their forebears, but it has been said that the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Some closer family context: Marritie’s brother Lucas on 27 September 1693 was accused in court of being the father of Catrina de Duytser’s as yet unborn baby (National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 [December 1972], “Ulster County, New York, Court Records, 1693-1775,” p. 276, translated and edited by Kenneth Scott, F.A.S.G.). Lucas had left town by the time the baby was born; his father Tjerck was required by the court “to give bond that the child shall not be a burden to the parish” (Court Records p. 277). Catrina baptized the boy Lucas on 3 June 1694. Later, in 1700, she marries and raises a small family.

Lucas goes on to marry Annetje Delva in 1695; they have four children together before he dies in 1703. Every indication is that his children remained full participants in the estate of Lucas’s father when it was distributed, starting in 1714. Lucas’s mother and father appear at the baptisms of his children. In Marritje’s case, records don’t show any later interaction with her family, although she continued to live in the area. The impression (not yet thoroughly researched) is that she was disowned. (I have yet to plumb the records, if any, of the distribution of Tjerck’s estate.)

Unintended pregnancies were no more of a surprise in this era than at any other time in human history. The local court records have more than a dozen similar accusations by women of men for “bastardy” from 1693-1775. In 1702, Hyltie Decker and Anna Clase are indicted for having delivered bastard children, and in 1712 Marytje Sluyter is accused of “having on Feb. 6 given birth to a bastard child and failed to give it succor, so that it died” (Court Records, pp. 279-280).

Nor was it unheard of for a European woman to give birth to a child with obvious non-European ancestry, although the consequences were typically some level of social and religious ostracism:

In 1704, Andrea C. Mosterman notes, “the Kingston congregation withdrew Fennetje in ’t Veld’s right to communion because the congregation believed she had wrongfully accused Johannes Schepmoes of having had sexual relations with her. Her ‘deception,’ Schepmoes claimed, was evident after she apparently had given birth to a Black child.” (Spaces of Enslavement, p. 108; Mosterman cites the 1704 Consistory Minutes from the Kingston Reformed Churchbook, Vol. 2, at the Ulster County Archives. I have not had the opportunity to check that original record.) Mosterman says the consistory determined Fennetje would be denied communion “until she acknowledged her wrongdoing and repented,” but there is no indication that she was ever welcomed back into the church.

We might guess that Hurley-born Hilletje in ’t Veld, who posted banns to marry English widower William Clerck 25 August 1698 and with him baptized six children in Kingston between then and 1715, was a sister of Fennetje. Steyntje in ’t Veld, another probable sister, is a frequent witness at these baptisms, and then she goes on to baptize seven kids of her own with Charles Wyllie (t’Seerlis Wyle, ’Ceerles Weyle, etc.) 1707-1719. (Each sister has one set of twins.) Fennetje never appears as a sponsor at any of these baptisms, nor does she ever marry in the Kingston church. Johannes Schepmoes had posted banns to marry widow Neeltje Gerritsen in Kingston 18 February 1698; after she died, on 7 February 1731 he announced his intention to marry Engeltjen Jans (they were apparently married 16 February by Lutheran minister Domine Berkenmeyer in New York City, according to the record in the Kingston church book). Fennetje, by contrast, vanishes from the record.

II.

On 12 May 1722 Grietje Brass swore in Kingston court that “her bastard child was begotten by Robin, Negro slave of Albert Roosa.” Roosa agreed “to give security for the maintenance of the child if the mother should be unable to support it” (Court Records, Quarterly Vol. 61, p. 60). Again, Grietje never appears in Kingston church records as getting married or baptizing any children, though some probable sisters raise families there.

Grietje’s story is unusual for the time in that it includes the name of the presumed father of the child in question. In many more cases—and particularly when the European parent is the father—the enslaved party’s name is never mentioned. Even when these stories include names of the enslaved, they all are told strictly from the perspective of the Europeans involved; they do not include any consideration of accounts or opinions from the Black participants. (For that matter, in Fennetje and Marritje’s cases the record does not include anything from the mother’s viewpoint either. Worth a note: Since the consequences for a black father, free or enslaved, could be dire, a mother might prefer not to reveal the father’s identity.)

III.

Nicole Saffold Maskiell in Bound by Bondage (see full citation in Sources below) discusses extensively the case of an unnamed European colonist in Somerset County, New Jersey, who in 1748 is the mother of an infant, named Philip, with African features. (Maskiell speculates that the mother could have been none other than Alida Livingston, daughter of Johanna Livingston, pp. 156, 158, but acknowledges that her “name remains a mystery,” p. 156.) Rather than raising the child herself, the unnamed mother passes the baby, via James Van Horne (of the same family as Cornelius Van Horne, noted slave trader of New York City married to Johanna Livingston; James’s sons David and Samuel owned the slave ship Revenge; see p. 155), to “Jane Furman, a local woman of Welsh descent,” to wet-nurse. Furman requires “some persuasion” to suckle a “Blacke” child, but is ultimately convinced based on “the pedigree of Philip’s mother.”

Philip’s mother is described as being of the “first rank” in colonial society; the family that raises him is left “with instructions to raise the child with an elite education in keeping with his lineage” (p. 156). Philip, we might guess, knew who his mother was, though he chose not to reveal her identity. Again we see that there were powerful negative social consequences for a white woman who had a child with black features. (These don’t compare to the physical consequences visited upon enslaved people for all manner of perceived transgressions.)

Maskiell notes that in 1748 New Jersey a child’s “freedom claim rested on his mother’s whiteness because freedom was intrinsically linked to gender in the colonial context with partus sequitur ventrum (“progeny follows the womb”), which mandated that slavery followed the condition of the womb” (p. 157). Maskiell notes that New York formally adopted the partus principle in 1706, four years after Marritje’s child triggered her divorce, and two years after Fennetje in ’t Veld’s case. (Maskiell cites Christopher Tomlins, “Transplants and Timing: Passages in the Creation of an Anglo-American Law of Slavery,” Theoretical Inquiries in Law 10, no. 2, July 2009, 406-7, and other sources.) She further remarks that from 1704-1709, New Jersey law included a provision “that mandated castration for any slave convicted of attempting ‘to Ravish or have carnal Knowledge of any White Woman, Maid or Child’” (p. 157). It is not clear what the rules would have been in New York when Marritje’s son was born.

Maskiell calls partus sequitur ventrum a “pseudo-Roman notion that slavery followed the condition of the mother, an overturning of centuries of English precedent” (p. 44); she describes it as “an entirely new invention, holding little in common with ancient law” (p. 208). She identifies it as a kind of response in 1662 (in Virginia) to the 1656 case of Elizabeth Key, who sued for freedom because her father was an Englishman (a wealthy planter); he had baptized her and established a guardian for her who was supposed to set her free, presumably because Key knew that others would try to hold her in bondage based on her African heritage. Key’s legal victory had been based on partus sequitur partem, the principle that “a father’s status determined that of a newborn child,” as well as the principle that under common law, Englishmen “could not hold Christians in slavery.” (In 1667 the Virginia assembly did away with that protection as well. See numerous other source citations in Maskiell for further reading.)

In the cases of the unnamed woman Maskiell describes as the mother of Philip, and of Grietje Brass and Fennetje in ’t Veld, and of Marritje DeWitt, partus sequitur partemwas to the benefit of their children, assuming it was applied.

(Consent is complicated by issues of gender, race, and social status. Mosterman cites Sharon Block when she notes that “no historian has recorded a conviction of a white man for the rape of a slave at any point from 1700 to the Civil War, let alone a conviction of a master raping his slave.” [Mosterman p. 98; Block p. 142 in “Lines of Color, Sex, and Service: Comparative Sexual Coercion in Early America,” in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, edited by Martha Hodes, pp. 141-163, New York: New York University Press, 1999.] When a European woman averred that sexual contact with an enslaved man had been without her consent, the consequences for the enslaved person were dire. In 1741, a repeat offender named Tom, enslaved on the farm of Widow Freer, was hanged [Ulster County Court Records, Vol. 61.1, pp. 65-66]. “The slave was valued at £25 and it was ordered that this sum be paid to Tom’s owner.” The investigation and trial were not taken lightly, lasting considerably longer than many lesser proceedings at the time, although it is hard to tell at this distance how fair or accurate any of it was. Nothing found so far in the records of Marritje De Witt or Grietje Brass or Fennetje in ’t Veld suggests that they tried to claim a forcible rape. Other contemporary records may fill in more detail.)

None of these stories tell us what happened to the newborn children. Were they raised in the European community, based on the principles discussed above? Considered enslaved and treated as such? Even before the English hair splitting over whether status follows the mother or the father, when a black woman gave birth to a white man’s child, the child was generally regarded as enslaved, though special considerations might apply. Did the same thing happen when a white woman was the mother of a child with an African father? The documents we have so far leave more questions than answers.

In the famous case a century later in Virginia of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (herself the enslaved daughter of a white man and his enslaved worker, Hemings was half-sister of Jefferson’s deceased wife), the former President officially freed two of the four surviving children he had with his enslaved subject (implying that they had been born enslaved); the other two he allowed to leave his household as adults without objection.

Closer to home, in 1671 we find Jacob Jansz Flodder of Beverwijck (Albany) admitting in court that “he could not sell an enslaved child ‘because the boy was his bastard son’” (Mosterman p. 97; she cites Van Laer, Minutes of the Court of Albany, Rensselaerswijck, and Schenectady, 1:254). The court orders Flodder “to prove the same on the next court day.” (Flodder, a.k.a. Gardenier, was a common visitor to the court in Albany, often being sued for debts unpaid or transactions that failed. The court record doesn’t offer details of what came before or after this hearing; it may have been settled privately. The record suggests that the court was familiar with Flodder and did not automatically trust his explanations. Marritje’s father Tjerck had taken over a lot in Albany in 1656 that had originally been granted to Flodder, who never developed it. Marritje’s uncle Lucas Andriessen and his partner Jan Joosten bought a sloop from Flodder in 1661. Flodder also ran a few mills in Rensselaerswyck and a farm near Greenbush.) So Flodder considered the child his slave, but at the same time could not bring himself to sell the boy. Again the enslaved party’s identity is not recorded; the mother is simply “the negress,” and she is not offered any role in determining the outcome. (The boy also is not named or consulted.)

(Black men married white women in the colony, at least under the Dutch: Mosterman, p. 45, cites the cases of “Jan, ‘the Negro’” and Annetjie Abrahams in 1663 and Anthony Jansen van Salee and Grietje Reyniers in the 1630s.)

All of these incidents sharpen the question: What became of Pieter, the child’s father? And what were the circumstances of the baby’s conception? And his birth? And his early death? Jefferson was famous; we are able to learn more about his doings. Details in Kingston, among the common folk, are more sparse, just when we want them most.

Pix

Sources

I’m just beginning to list sources here. Apologies for not being more complete. I will continue to add to this list as I have time. There are many sources of information on the DeWitt family line, some better than others.

Printed sources:

The DeWitt Genealogy: Descendants of Tjereck Claessen DeWitt of Ulster County, New York; compiled by Mary V[eldran] DeWitt (b. 1895) (privately published; no year indicated). This volume includes only names and dates, no attributions or locations or other stories or information are included. It includes nearly 2800 DeWitt descendants, some with more details, some fewer. It also includes some information on spouses and their parents. The laboriously typewritten volume came from years of personal research, often onsite in Ulster County; the current location of notes from this research is not known, but some of them may have gone to the Genealogical Society of Bergen County (New Jersey), where Mary DeWitt grew up and lived much of her life.

Baptismal and Marriage Registers of the Old Dutch Church of Kingston, Ulster County, New York (formerly named Wiltwyck, and often familiarly called Esopus or ’Sopus), for One Hundred and Fifty Years from their commencement in 1660. Transcribed and edited by Roswell Randall Hoes, Chaplain U.S.N., corresponding secretary of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, etc. New York 1891; available today from Higginson Book Co., Salem, Mass., 508-745-7170. Detailed information about baptisms has been filled in through the end of 1687, marriages through 1701. More information is available. Records begin 1660. Other baptisms may have taken place in Hurley and other locations nearby; also from time to time itinerant ministers would travel through and perform various rites, not always entered in the books. This is available online at archive.org.

The De Witt Family of Ulster County, New York, compiled by Thomas G. Evans (reprinted from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society Record, October 1886), 1886, Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Co., 201-213 East Twelfth Street, New York. Available online from archive.org.

Marbletown, New York, baptism records at Archive.org.

Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York, Andrea C. Mosterman, Cornell University Press (published in association with the New Netherland Institute), 2021.

Minutes of the Court of Albany, Rensselaerswyck and Schenectady, 1668-1673, Vol. I (a continuation of the Minutes of the Court of Fort Orange and Beverwyck), translated and edited by A.J.F. Van Laer, Albany, 1926, University of the State of New York. This is also available from archive.org.

Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry, Nicole Saffold Maskiell, Cornell University Press (published in association with the New Netherland Institute), 2022.

Documentary History of Rhinebeck, in Dutchess County, N.Y., Embracing Biographical Sketches and Genealogical Records of our First Families and First Settlers, with a History of Its Churches and Other Public Institutions. Edward M. Smith, Rhinebeck, 1881. Available online at the Library of Congress, probably other sources as well.

Historic Old Rhinebeck, Howard H. Morse, 1908, Pocantico Printery, Flocker & Hicks, Tarrytown-on-Hudson, N.Y.; available online in multiple places.

Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York: Marriages from 11 December 1639 to 26 August 1801, Samuel S. Purple, M.D., editor, printed for the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, 1890, reprinted 2003 by Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland. For brevity cited here as New Amsterdam Marriages. Record of early marriages in the Dutch Reform Church in Manhattan is also available online. PDF copies can be downloaded from the Internet Archive (archive.org) in various forms: Just the index, a reworked compilation by Robert Billard (often quite useful), or in complete scanned form.

Records of the Reformed Dutch Church in New Amsterdam and New York: Baptisms from 25 December, 1639, to 27 December, 1730, Edited by Thomas Grier Evans, 1901, New York, printed for the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; reprinted 1968 by the Gregg Press, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. For brevity cited here as New Amsterdam Baptisms. Record of early baptisms in the Dutch Reform Church in Manhattan is also available online at archive.org, Volume 1 (1639-1708) and Volume 2 (1708-1730, plus index), as well as at openlibrary.org, which seems allied with archive.org. (Used to be online here, but that link seems to have evaporated.) Note that this (both volumes combined) is Volume II of the NYG&BS “Collections” series, which can make citation confusing. Page numbering is in a single sequence across both volumes (Vol. 1 ends at p. 333; Vol. 2 begins with p. 334).

Kingston Papers (two volumes), translated by Dingman Versteeg, with revision of pages 1-171 by Samuel Oppenheim; Peter R. Christoph, Kenneth Scott and Kenn Stryker-Rodda, editors. Published in the series called New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, under the direction of the Holland Society of New York, Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc., Baltimore, 1976. These volumes can be found in multiple places online (see for example the New Netherland Institute), and the source text can be found on the Ulster County archives Website (see below, “The Kingston Papers”). First part (the Oppenheim revisions) was originally published as “The Dutch Records of Kingston,” in Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association, Volume XI, 1912. Note that at the end of Vol. 2 there are two separate indexes, one covering the Oppenheim revisions and the second covering the balance of the pages. This set includes not just court minutes but also an extensive collection of records kept by the court secretary, including deeds, contracts, and other miscellany.

Online sources:

English translations of Dutch colonial records, also known as “The Kingston Papers,” available online. These are the Dingman Versteeg translations. The originals are available on microfilm from the Ulster County archivist, who can be found through the same link. A cross-reference indexing the archive pages to the microfilm frames to the pages in the printed translation can be obtained from Donald Lockhart, dlockhart at rcn dot com, who includes an entertaining introduction about the misadventures of the original manuscript records in the 1800s, before they were at last safely ensconced with the Ulster County archives.

Also see The History of Kingston, New York, by Marius Schoonmaker (1888), a volume thick with detail and transcribed original records.

Ulster County, N. Y., Probate Records, In the Office of the Surrogate, and in the County Clerk’s Office at Kingston, N. Y., compiled, abstracted and translation by Gustave Anjou, Ph. D., 1906. Privately published (?) in New York, but available at genealogical libraries (NYPL and others). Subtitle: “A careful abstract and translation of the Dutch and English wills, letters of administration after intestates, and inventories from 1665, with genealogical and historical notes, and list of Dutch and Frisian baptismal names with their English equivalents.” Introduction by Judge A[lphonso] T[rumpbour] Clearwater, LL.D. This is available in reprinted form. Note that there are two distinct volumes included in this work, sometimes combined into one physical book.

National Genealogical Society Quarterly, Vol. 60, No. 4 (December 1972) and Vol. 61 (1973), hard to find in print form except in libraries, apparently not on archive.org, but available from the NGS online for paid members.

Reproduced herein:

The consistory minutes of the Old Dutch Church in Kingston, translated from the orignal Dutch by Dr. Charles Gehring

Wills of Tjerck Claessen DeWitt and his brother Jan, who died unmarried in Kingston, 1699 (1906 Anjou edition; see link above)

Research assistance:

Thanks to Gage DeWitt and Dr. Charles Gehring for images and translations of the consistory records (kept in the Old Dutch Church, Kingston, New York, and as far as I know not published in print or online form).

Last Modified: Wednesday, October 25, 2023

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